To Cage the Red Dragon

SEATO and the Defence of Southeast Asia 1955-1965

Damien Fenton

Publication Year: 2012

The South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was the focal point of Western military efforts to deter and if need be defeat, communist aggression in Southeast Asia between 1955 and 1965. In this mission it was, on its own terms entirely successful, and none of the SEATO regional members (Pakistan, Thailand or the Philippines) succumbed to communist rule, then or later. Much of Southeast Asia emerged from the geo-strategic vulnerabilities of the immediate post-colonial period un-swayed by the efforts of local (or foreign-based) communist movements. To Cage the Red Dragon examines the role of SEATO during its first ten years as a military alliance in helping secure this outcome.

Half Title, Title, Copyright Pages

Table of Contents

List of Maps

Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank my friends and colleagues at the School
of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales
campus, Australian Defence Force Academy, particularly Professors
Jeffrey Grey, Peter Dennis and Dr John Connor for their encouragement,
support and friendship over the years. Jeff and Peter’s efforts
to encourage and assist former students to actually become working ...

Introduction

It is now 20 years since the Cold War effectively ended with the dramatic
collapse of the Soviet Union and its client states in Eastern and
Central Europe, and just over three decades since the final bloody
climax of the Vietnam War played itself out on the streets of Saigon,
Phnom Penh and Vientiane. The historiography of the wider Cold
War has burgeoned accordingly, greatly assisted by increasing access ...

Chapter 1. SEATO's Place in the Cold War

Th e Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was created as a
direct result of the First Indochina War, but as such it was only one
element of the wider Cold War. Th is conflict, born amidst the dying
embers of the Second World War, and by some measures, not yet
entirely consigned to history, enveloped most of the entire planet ...

Chapter 2. The Conventional Military Threat

By late 1954, the potential threat to Southeast Asia posed by the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) and to a lesser extent, the People’s
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), was one that could not
be ignored by the United States and its allies. Th e Korean War had
demonstrated the PRC’s readiness and ability to intervene and fight ...

Chapter 3. SEATO's Military Organisation 1955-1965

Having established that the PRC, and to a lesser extent the DRVN,
presented a credible threat to the security of Southeast Asia, we must
now turn to SEATO’s response. By itself, the Manila Treaty and the
statements of intent contained within its articles would not be enough
to deter communist aggression. If those statements were to have any ...

Chapter 4. SEATO's Strategic Concepts

Th e military advisers agreed that before any substantial planning could
take place, the alliance members needed to agree upon a set of strategic
concepts. Throughout 1955 and 1956, a series of Staff Planners’
Meetings were held to produce this framework. These took place
against the backdrop of a range of different strategic priorities brought
to the meetings by each SEATO member. Some of these were complementary ...

Chapter 5. Planning for Limited War

With the establishment of SEATO’s strategic concepts and the creation
of the MPO, the stage was set to begin turning those concepts
into viable contingency plans dealing with specific scenarios. Planning
at this level would involve the acquisition of highly detailed knowledge
of the region in general, equally detailed knowledge of the PLA’s
and PAVN’s capabilities and potential objectives, the creation of ...

Chapter 6. Plan 5: The First Counter-Insurgency Plan

At the SEATO Staff Planners’ Meetings of 1955–1956, the alliance
had designated planning for limited war contingencies as SEATO’s
first priority. Counter-insurgency, while recognised as a key element
of the Communist threat to the region, was something to study, share
intelligence on and monitor, but for political and operational reasons,
it was felt that insurgent threats facing member states were best ...

Thai confidence in SEATO was badly shaken by the failure of the
alliance to agree on the need to activate Plan 5. They were frustrated
and annoyed by opposition of the United Kingdom and France to
such action. However, the fact that the United States had eventually
concurred with the British assessment of the situation in practice, if
not in principle, and had committed itself to supporting the Geneva ...

Chapter 8. The Beginning of the End 1964-1965

As the SEATO alliance moved into its ninth year, it still commanded
the active support of the United States and as such was still the preeminent
forum for coordinating Western defence strategy in Southeast
Asia. But as 1964 unfolded, Washington began to reassess SEATO’s
usefulness in this regard in light of the growing unilateral American ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.